An integrated circuit (“IC”) is a semiconductor device that includes many electronic components (e.g., transistors, resistors, diodes, etc.). These components are often interconnected to form multiple circuit components (e.g., gates, cells, memory units, arithmetic units, controllers, decoders, etc.) on the IC. The electronic and circuit components of IC's are jointly referred to below as “components.” An IC also includes multiple layers of metal and/or polysilicon wiring that interconnect its electronic and circuit components. For instance, many ICs are currently fabricated with five metal layers. In theory, the wiring on the metal layers can be all-angle wiring (i.e., the wiring can be in any arbitrary direction). Such all-angle wiring is commonly referred to as Euclidean wiring. In practice, however, each metal layer typically has a preferred wiring direction, and the preferred direction alternates between successive metal layers. Many ICs use the Manhattan wiring model that specifies alternating layers of preferred-direction horizontal and vertical wiring. In this wiring model, the majority of the wires can only make 90° turns. However, occasional diagonal jogs are sometimes allowed on the preferred horizontal and vertical layers.
The distance of the wiring on the metal layers determines the propagation delay exhibited during operation of the circuit components. In turn, the propagation delay introduced in a circuit directly impacts the operational speed of the circuit (i.e., the greater the propagation delay the slower the operational speed of the circuit). The length of the wire determines the amount of propagation delay Introduced into a circuit (i.e., the longer the wire the greater the propagation delay). In addition, when circuit connections are routed between metal layers, using mechanisms referred to as “vias”, a significant amount of additional propagation delay is introduced. Accordingly, it is desirable to reduce the length of wires necessary to interconnect electronic components in an IC to reduce the propagation delay and to enhance the operational speed of the IC. It is also desirable to minimize the number of circuit connections routed between metal layers to further reduce the propagation delay.